Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

All Outputs (40)

Style Substance And The Status Of The Defoe Canon FINAL (2024)
Journal Article
Seager, N. (in press). Style Substance And The Status Of The Defoe Canon FINAL. The Library,

This article re-attributes to Daniel Defoe (c.1660–1731) one pamphlet and confirms his authorship of three works currently listed as ‘probable’ attributions, including one substantial book. More generally, it proposes refinements to authorship attrib... Read More about Style Substance And The Status Of The Defoe Canon FINAL.

The Novel (2024)
Book Chapter
Seager, N. (2024). The Novel. In J. Hone, & P. Rogers (Eds.), Jonathan Swift in Context (190-198). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Jonathan Swift remains the most important and influential satirist in the English language. The author of Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, and A Tale of a Tub, in addition to vast numbers of political pamphlets, satirical verses, sermons, and o... Read More about The Novel.

The Celebrated Daniel De Foe (2023)
Book Chapter
Seager, N. The Celebrated Daniel De Foe. In The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe (583-609). Oxford University Press (OUP). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198827177.013.40

The story of Daniel Defoe’s publication, from his death in 1731 to the mid-twentieth century, shows three things that have been inadequately acknowledged in accounts of his posthumous reputation. First, his writings were extensively republished, and... Read More about The Celebrated Daniel De Foe.

Defoe and Economics (2023)
Book Chapter
Seager, N. Defoe and Economics. In The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe (249-271). Oxford University Press (OUP). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198827177.013.41

This chapter outlines Daniel Defoe’s economic ideas, first situating his periodical essays, pamphlets, and economic tracts in the context of the financial revolution, then considering anxieties he expresses about the new ‘culture of commerce’, and fi... Read More about Defoe and Economics.

Defoe and Economics: Industry, Trade, and Finance (2023)
Book Chapter
Seager, N. (2023). Defoe and Economics: Industry, Trade, and Finance. In N. Seager, & J. A. Downie (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe (249-271). Oxford University Press (OUP). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198827177.013.41

This chapter outlines Daniel Defoe’s economic ideas, first situating his periodical essays, pamphlets, and economic tracts in the context of the financial revolution, then considering anxieties he expresses about the new ‘culture of commerce’, and fi... Read More about Defoe and Economics: Industry, Trade, and Finance.

The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe (Ed. by N Seager) (2023)
Book
Seager, N. (2023). N. Seager, & J. Downie (Eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe (Ed. by N Seager). Oxford University Press (OUP). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198827177.001.0001

The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe is the most comprehensive overview available of the author's life, times, writings, and reception. Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) is a major author in world literature, renowned for a succession of novels including Robin... Read More about The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe (Ed. by N Seager).

The Celebrated Daniel De Foe: Publication History, 1731-1945 (2023)
Book Chapter
Seager, N. (2023). The Celebrated Daniel De Foe: Publication History, 1731-1945. In N. Seager, & J. A. Downie (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe (583-609). Oxford: Oxford University Press (OUP). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198827177.013.40

The story of Daniel Defoe’s publication, from his death in 1731 to the mid-twentieth century, shows three things that have been inadequately acknowledged in accounts of his posthumous reputation. First, his writings were extensively republished, and... Read More about The Celebrated Daniel De Foe: Publication History, 1731-1945.

A Voyage to Brobdingnag (2023)
Book Chapter
Seager, N. (2023). A Voyage to Brobdingnag. In D. Cook, & N. Seager (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Gulliver's Travels (137-149). Cambridge University Press (CUP). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108909488.013

The Voyage to Brobdingnag reduces Gulliver from the magnanimous and principled behemoth of the Voyage to Lilliput to a risible and contemptible little beast. The first section considers how Gulliver is diminished to an inconsequential creature, objec... Read More about A Voyage to Brobdingnag.

Introduction (2023)
Book Chapter
Cook, D., & Seager, N. (2023). Introduction. In The Cambridge Companion to Gulliver's Travels (1-8). Cambridge University Press (CUP). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108909488.002

The introduction recounts the life and writing career of Jonathan Swift, centred on his authorship of Gulliver’s Travels (1726). It provides an overview of the action of Swift’s masterpiece, placing the adventures of Lemuel Gulliver in parallel to th... Read More about Introduction.

Politics (2023)
Book Chapter
Seager, N. (2023). Politics. In A. Rivero, & G. Justice (Eds.), Daniel Defoe in Context (155--162). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108872140.025

Written with general readers and students in mind, the essays in this volume provide up-to-date knowledge about eighteenth-century literature, culture, and history in a high quality, clearly written, but completely accessible form. Defoe came to p... Read More about Politics.

The Afterlife of Daniel Defoe's Captain Singleton in the Seven Years' War (2022)
Journal Article
Seager. (2023). The Afterlife of Daniel Defoe's Captain Singleton in the Seven Years' War. Review of English Studies, 74(314), https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgac082

Daniel Defoe’s pirate novel Captain Singleton (1720) was republished in 1757, during the political and military crises of the early stages of the Seven Years’ War. The fact that Singleton at this time was extensively rewritten has gone entirely unnot... Read More about The Afterlife of Daniel Defoe's Captain Singleton in the Seven Years' War.

Biography (2022)
Book Chapter
Seager, N. (2022). Biography. In J. Lynch (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Johnson (260–278). Oxford University Press (OUP). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198794660.013.16

This chapter surveys Samuel Johnson’s career as a biographer, exploring tensions between the ideals of life-writing he propounded in essays and conversations and his evolving practice from the 1730s to the 1780s. The chapter outlines three phases in... Read More about Biography.

Dissenting Writing (2022)
Book Chapter
Seager, N. (2023). Dissenting Writing. In N. McDowell, & H. Power (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of English Prose, 1640-1714. Oxford University Press

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels (1726) (2022)
Book Chapter
Seager, N. (2022). Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels (1726). In K. Berndt, & A. Johns (Eds.), Handbook of the British Novel in the Long Eighteenth Century (175--192). De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110650440-010

Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) bears an uneasy relationship to the novel genre as this has been constructed in post-WWII criticism in terms of realism, coherent subjectivity, and middle-class values. Formally and ideologically, Gulliver r... Read More about Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels (1726).

Defoe, the Sacheverell Affair, and A Letter to Mr. Bisset (1709) (2021)
Journal Article
Seager, N. (2021). Defoe, the Sacheverell Affair, and A Letter to Mr. Bisset (1709). Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 115(1), 79-86. https://doi.org/10.1086/712790

This article aims to remove the “probable” caveat from one title listed in P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens’s Critical Bibliography of Daniel Defoe (1998). It demonstrates that previously overlooked external evidence confirms the internal evidence cited... Read More about Defoe, the Sacheverell Affair, and A Letter to Mr. Bisset (1709).